Fujifilm Autofocus DOES NOT WORK properly Locked

Fujifilm Autofocus/ OutOfFocus 😉 "X-posed"

This article will tackle Fujifilms current AF-S inconsistency. I expect and hope people who have equally experienced issues with their Fuji autofocus will participate and help to escalate this matter.

My current X-mount camera is the X-Pro3, of which I tried 4 different, brand new units!!
The cameras I had before were the X100F and X100V, which showed similar issues.
The Pro3 firmware is running the latest update 1.31, I also tried with previous firmware versions.

Lenses used/tested have been:

18mm 1.4 LM
23mm f2
27mm 2.8 WR
35mm f2
35mm 1.4
33mm 1.4 LM

Problem description:

30-50% of my shots come out soft due to missed focus. The amount of focus miscalculation varies. Sometimes I see a clear front focus, sometimes I cannot make out at all where the focus ended up. Objects photographed are static.

Problem occurrance:

During strong daylight with moderate to high amount of contrasts;
Barely ever in low-light situations or night

Settings used:

AF-S Single Point AF
MF with back button focus was tried too (even if it would focus correctly by doing so, this should not be the default way of focusing with an AF camera.)
OVF and EVF, both show same inconsistency and general behaviour
AF+MF: off
Focus priority for shutter release
NO recomposition after focusing, to avoid field curvature interference
All focus box sizes tested when using EVF

CURIOUS OBSERVATION:

The camera cannot calculate focus distance correctly on a consistent basis. When having supposedly acquired focus you can keep focusing on the same exact spot and the camera will change the focus distance. I did a test and got 3 different focus distances out of 3 repeated focus activations (see pictures below). The focus distance scale credibility has been confirmed by examining identical pictures taken at differently calculated focus distances.
This alone shows that something is not right with the focusing system and getting a correctly focused image is a game of luck.

I am not the only one with this issue, so hereby I hope to gather all Fuji users who care about the correct functionality of their gear and analyse their pictures at pixel level, in order to expose Fujifilms autofocus as faulty. This is not acceptable and should not be tolerated by anyone.

Closing notes: I mainly use Nikon F and Z, as well as Fuji GFX50 and never had focusing issues. I do not suffer from Parkinson, so any user-error gents might try to throw at me can be disregarded.

All AF cameras of any manufacturer focus by either half pressing the shutter, or alternatively use the AF Back-button. Therefore we should avoid further suggestions of what might be wrong with certain settings in Fuji cameras. The cameras are meant to be simple and intuitive in use and are also marketed that way. If the usual way does not work and provides inconsistent results, something is wrong and we should approach Fujifilm with this.

Thank you for reading and hopefully contributing with your own unsatisfying AF experiences!

30-50%?!? Sorry to hear that. That’s incredible. With AF-S, AF+MF=OFF, Priority=Focus, it’s almost impossible for me to get the X-T4 to miss focus. I will admit I don’t even have the distance scale on my display - never found it necesssary, so I can’t speak to the accuracy. I sincerely wish you luck in finding a solution.

rattrr75 wrote:

30-50%?!? Sorry to hear that. That’s incredible. With AF-S, AF+MF=OFF, Priority=Focus, it’s almost impossible for me to get the X-T4 to miss focus. I will admit I don’t even have the distance scale on my display - never found it necesssary, so I can’t speak to the accuracy. I sincerely wish you luck in finding a solution.

Exactly the same here, X-T4 and X-T20. Same AF settings.

@ OP Maybe you have a faulty X-Pro3 body. Your experience completely contradicts my experience. Do you know someone who also has a Fujifilm body, so you could get yourself a comparison. Or in a photo shop.

Regards,

Martin

Are you sure that you are set to AF-S?

I'm curious, as well, about your comments regarding BBF vs. conventional shutter release. This tends to relate to individual technique far more so than brand differences. Personally, I get better results with BBF.

It is a fair criticism of Fuji for the feel of the shutter release button, but adding a soft release can make a world of difference for some users. I know I've benefitted somewhat from adding the soft release on both my bodies (X-T2 / X-T20).

rattrr75 wrote:

30-50%?!? Sorry to hear that. That’s incredible. With AF-S, AF+MF=OFF, Priority=Focus, it’s almost impossible for me to get the X-T4 to miss focus. I will admit I don’t even have the distance scale on my display - never found it necesssary, so I can’t speak to the accuracy. I sincerely wish you luck in finding a solution.

I also never used the distance scale, but the moment I found out there is one I activated it and luckily it works and exposed something wrong with the AF.

thanks for the wishes, I really hope Fujifilm can help out, unfortunately the official support so far could not help.

Rightsaidfred wrote:

rattrr75 wrote:

30-50%?!? Sorry to hear that. That’s incredible. With AF-S, AF+MF=OFF, Priority=Focus, it’s almost impossible for me to get the X-T4 to miss focus. I will admit I don’t even have the distance scale on my display - never found it necesssary, so I can’t speak to the accuracy. I sincerely wish you luck in finding a solution.

Exactly the same here, X-T4 and X-T20. Same AF settings.

@ OP Maybe you have a faulty X-Pro3 body. Your experience completely contradicts my experience. Do you know someone who also has a Fujifilm body, so you could get yourself a comparison. Or in a photo shop.

Regards,

Martin

As written it is already my 4th X-Pro3 body. I call myself a crazy idiot for even giving it that many chances, but the camera just appeals so much to me... 
I will go to the photo store tomorrow and try Fujis without Hybrid Viewfinder... as I only owned Fujis with Hybrid OVF there might something be wrong with those cameras exclusively. I am just surprised that only few people report AF issues...

JNR wrote:

Are you sure that you are set to AF-S?

I'm curious, as well, about your comments regarding BBF vs. conventional shutter release. This tends to relate to individual technique far more so than brand differences. Personally, I get better results with BBF.

It is a fair criticism of Fuji for the feel of the shutter release button, but adding a soft release can make a world of difference for some users. I know I've benefitted somewhat from adding the soft release on both my bodies (X-T2 / X-T20).

The only difference when focusing via back button is, that it focuses with fully open aperture as opposed to focusing directly with your specifically chosen aperture. All mirrorless cameras do the latter per default.

and yes I use exclusively AF-S

In AF-C, if you keep the shutter button half pressed on the same object without moving you can also see the focus jumping around a bit, but that could be due to the AF-C system "searching"...

You got me curious, so I did a very quick check: X100V, X-E3 w/ 27/2.8, and X-T20 w/ 15-45, just because those were the first AF lenses that fell to hand.

The X-T20 does seem to be more erratic than the others in terms of reporting focus distance, but (a) I was in the 10x view at the time and didn’t notice the image being markedly out of focus, and (b) it’s been IR-converted, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there are slight focusing quirks.

Other than that, the E3 seemed to have a little variation in the reported distance but again didn’t look to be problematic in the 10x view. Maybe pixel-peeping a raw file would show a difference. The X100V was essentially faultless.

One characteristic I’ve always noted is that they all seem to need contrast on the x-axis of the sensor (eg strong vertical lines in a landscape-orientation image) in order to focus. Show them an area containing purely horizontal lines (ie vertical contrast) and they struggle. But then, that seems to be common to many cameras, not just Fuji; in fact I’ve used a couple of Canon cameras recently which simply couldn’t obtain focus at all in this scenario, ever.

Overall I’ve never noticed a problem in real world use. A while ago I did notice that a number of my E3 images were coming out blurred, but a while after that I also noticed that I often knock the AF-L button while carrying the camera, so I’ve set that to “AF-on” instead and I thin’ the problem’s gone away…

Nikonian_19 wrote:

Fujifilm Autofocus/ OutOfFocus 😉 "X-posed"

This article will tackle Fujifilms current AF-S inconsistency. I expect and hope people who have equally experienced issues with their Fuji autofocus will participate and help to escalate this matter.

My current X-mount camera is the X-Pro3, of which I tried 4 different, brand new units!!
The cameras I had before were the X100F and X100V, which showed similar issues.
The Pro3 firmware is running the latest update 1.31, I also tried with previous firmware versions.

Lenses used/tested have been:

18mm 1.4 LM
23mm f2
27mm 2.8 WR
35mm f2
35mm 1.4
33mm 1.4 LM

Problem description:

30-50% of my shots come out soft due to missed focus. The amount of focus miscalculation varies. Sometimes I see a clear front focus, sometimes I cannot make out at all where the focus ended up. Objects photographed are static.

Problem occurrance:

During strong daylight with moderate to high amount of contrasts;
Barely ever in low-light situations or night

Settings used:

AF-S Single Point AF
MF with back button focus was tried too (even if it would focus correctly by doing so, this should not be the default way of focusing with an AF camera.)
OVF and EVF, both show same inconsistency and general behaviour
AF+MF: off
Focus priority for shutter release
NO recomposition after focusing, to avoid field curvature interference
All focus box sizes tested when using EVF

CURIOUS OBSERVATION:

The camera cannot calculate focus distance correctly on a consistent basis. When having supposedly acquired focus you can keep focusing on the same exact spot and the camera will change the focus distance. I did a test and got 3 different focus distances out of 3 repeated focus activations (see pictures below). The focus distance scale credibility has been confirmed by examining identical pictures taken at differently calculated focus distances.
This alone shows that something is not right with the focusing system and getting a correctly focused image is a game of luck.

I am not the only one with this issue, so hereby I hope to gather all Fuji users who care about the correct functionality of their gear and analyse their pictures at pixel level, in order to expose Fujifilms autofocus as faulty. This is not acceptable and should not be tolerated by anyone.

Closing notes: I mainly use Nikon F and Z, as well as Fuji GFX50 and never had focusing issues. I do not suffer from Parkinson, so any user-error gents might try to throw at me can be disregarded.

All AF cameras of any manufacturer focus by either half pressing the shutter, or alternatively use the AF Back-button. Therefore we should avoid further suggestions of what might be wrong with certain settings in Fuji cameras. The cameras are meant to be simple and intuitive in use and are also marketed that way. If the usual way does not work and provides inconsistent results, something is wrong and we should approach Fujifilm with this.

Thank you for reading and hopefully contributing with your own unsatisfying AF experiences!

Weird - how did you run the test? Is this on a tripod and the shutter half pressed three times in a row? Why is the rear screen out of focus in the last two shots?

do you have SOOC examples so that we can see all your settings?

i don’t have an X-Pro3 but this definitely wouldn’t happen with X-T or X-S cameras.

Nikonian_19 wrote:

The only difference when focusing via back button is, that it focuses with fully open aperture as opposed to focusing directly with your specifically chosen aperture. All mirrorless cameras do the latter per default.

I don’t think that’s different. The half-press AF will still focus wide open, but it’ll also immediately stop down after obtaining focus to give DOF preview. The back button just does the AF bit, not the DOF preview.

I know the issue as I have experienced it myself, but not in such high occurances.
Nostly it is with items at moderate distances. The camera reports it as in focus, but in fact nothing at all in the image is. I try to keep an eye on the distance scale, but it is not always easy to spot a misfire.

Here are 2 consecutive shots from 30min ago. Same composition, AF spot etc...
2 shots, 2 DIFFERENT shots the left focused closer/too close, the right one further away. Check the pole and the flower next to it.

Its a center crop screenshot from Capture one... if the resolution lacks, I can upload again better

@Graybeard:

I just held my iphone to the viewfinder of the Pro 3 and yes, its 3 consecutive focusings with each time another focus distance measured..

Jeff Biscuits wrote:

Nikonian_19 wrote:

The only difference when focusing via back button is, that it focuses with fully open aperture as opposed to focusing directly with your specifically chosen aperture. All mirrorless cameras do the latter per default.

I don’t think that’s different. The half-press AF will still focus wide open, but it’ll also immediately stop down after obtaining focus to give DOF preview. The back button just does the AF bit, not the DOF preview.

Check by looking at your lens when focusing with each method...

Stuart VC wrote:

I’ve got hundreds of perfectly sharp shots on my Flickr page, taken with a variety of lenses so I’m good. The cameras serve me well.

This whole OP is coming across as a touch trolly, coupled with the 2 day old account and username. Taking this with a massive grain of salt.

You also had your first day here, right? 
I am mainly a Nikon shooter, hence the randomly chosen name...

Thanks for your "useful" input...

Here are 2 more examples of 2 consecutive shots being focused differently by the cam.

Nikonian_19 wrote:

Jeff Biscuits wrote:

Nikonian_19 wrote:

The only difference when focusing via back button is, that it focuses with fully open aperture as opposed to focusing directly with your specifically chosen aperture. All mirrorless cameras do the latter per default.

I don’t think that’s different. The half-press AF will still focus wide open, but it’ll also immediately stop down after obtaining focus to give DOF preview. The back button just does the AF bit, not the DOF preview.

Check by looking at your lens when focusing with each method...

Well, it appears that it works differently to both of our comments 🙂

I might be looking at it wrong, but (on the X-E3) they both seem to focus the same way (wide-open for the most part, or stopped down a little if the scene is very bright), it’s what happens next that differs: the half-press sets the aperture and locks it, ready to shoot, while the back button seems to gradually stop down to a certain point, and responds to changing light.

Surely it would make no sense for the camera to stop down prior to AF? (Unless the light is so bright that it blows everything out when wide open.) That’d just be crippling itself.

Jeff Biscuits wrote:

Surely it would make no sense for the camera to stop down prior to AF? (Unless the light is so bright that it blows everything out when wide open.) That’d just be crippling itself.

In AF-C it stops down first

Stuart VC wrote:

I’ve got hundreds of perfectly sharp shots on my Flickr page, taken with a variety of lenses so I’m good. The cameras serve me well.

This whole OP is coming across as a touch trolly, coupled with the 2 day old account and username. Taking this with a massive grain of salt.

And one more thing, although I usually do not justify myself to such people:

I have a GFX50R and GFX50SII at home, which both DO NOT show this behaviour. What everybody calls slow and outdated, works perfectly fine and quite quick

Same goes for X-T1 and X-Pro1 I used to have for a short time...